“As fast-track growth overhauls the Ethiopian society, the regime is obliged to re-consider its recipe of mixed authoritarianism and development – as Franco’s Spain was.”

On May 24 Ethiopia will celebrate its fifth parliamentary elections. A defeat of the incumbent Ethiopia’s People Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), in power since 1991, appears as highly unlikely. Such a defeat would see the opposition making a giant stride forward from its current unique seat in the chamber. That alone reflects the EPRDF’s deliberate efforts – in the 2010 elections, marred by credible allegations of intimidation and fraud – to avoid at any rate a repetition of the ‘accident’ of 2005. Then, the regime was inflicted a devastating and utterly humiliating loss in Addis Ababa. To halt the propagation of the malaise, the then PM Meles Zenawi decided to administer the country through authoritarianism and developmentalism in equal doses. Predictably Zenawi’s death in Brussels in 2012 did not change much and his successor Hailemariam Desalegn is imparting a recipe only marginally more developmental.Continue reading →

(Bloomberg) — Development of the Ethiopian sugar industry in South Omo that will bring in migrant laborers may exacerbate conflict in the ethnically diverse region, according to the U.S. aid agency and other donors.Continue reading →

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A TRUE POLITICIAN’S PRICELESS QUALITIES

PASSION & A SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY & PROPORTION.

Max Weber

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QUOTATION FOR THE AGES

"When they [government officials] first came they told us an investor was coming and we would develop the land alongside one another. They didn't say the land would be taken away from us entirely. I don't understand why the government took the land."

Farmer Gemechu Garbaba

His wife adds:

"Since the land was taken away from us we are impoverished. Nothing has gone right for us, since these investors came."